The subaltern

by G. R. Gleig

The farmhouses in the south of France, like those in Spain, are rarely provided with fireplaces in any other apartment than the kitchen. It is, indeed, customary for families to live during the winter months entirely with their servants; and hence the want of a fireplace in the parlour is not felt any more than in the bedrooms. I observed, likewise, that hardly any maison of the kind was furnished with glazed windows, wooden lattices being almost universally substituted. These, during the summer months, are kept open all day, and closed only at night; and I believe that the extreme mildness of the climate renders an open window at such seasons very agreeable. On the present occasion, however, we anticipated no slight annoyance from the absence of these two essential matters, a chimney and a window in our room; and we immediately set our wits to work to remove the evil.

Both Grey's servant and my own chanced to be exceedingly ingenious fellows; the former, in particular, could, to use a vulgar phrase, turn his hand to anything. Under his directions we set a party of men to work, and, knocking a hole through one corner of our room, we speedily converted it into a fireplace. To give vent to the smoke, we took the trouble to build an external chimney, carrying it up as high as the roof of the house; and our pride and satisfaction were neither of them trifling when we found that it drew to admiration. I cannot say that the masonry was very exact, or that the sort of buttress added to the mansion improved its general appearance; but it had the effect of rendering our apartment exceedingly comfortable, and that was the sole object which we had in view.

Having thus provided for our warmth, the next thing to be done was to manufacture such a window as might supply us with light, and at the same time resist the weather. For this purpose we lifted a couple of lattices from their hinges, and having cut out four panels in each, we covered the spaces with white paper soaked in oil. The light thus admitted was not, indeed, very brilliant, but it was sufficient for all our purposes; and we found, when the storm again returned, that our oil-paper stood out against it stoutly. Then, having swept our floor, unpacked and arranged the contents of our canteen, and provided good dry hay-sacks for our couches, we felt as if the whole world could have supplied no better or more desirable habitation.

To build the chimney and construct the window furnished occupation enough for one day; the next was spent in cutting wood, and laying in a store of fuel against the winter. In effecting this, it must be confessed that we were not over-fastidious as to the source from which it was derived; and hence a greater number of fruit-trees were felled and cut to pieces than perhaps there was any positive necessity to destroy. But it is impossible to guard against every little excess when troops have established themselves in an enemy's country; and the French have just cause of thankfulness that so little comparative devastation marked the progress of our armies. Their own, it is well known, were not remarkable for their orderly conduct in such countries as they overran.

I have dwelt upon these little circumstances longer perhaps than their insignificance in the eyes of my reader may warrant, but I could not help it. There is no period of my life on which I look back with more unmixed pleasure than that which saw me for the first time set down in winter quarters. And hence every trifling incident connected with it, however unimportant to others, appears the reverse of unimportant to me. And such, I believe, is universally the case when a man undertakes to be his own biographer. Things and occurrences which, to the world at large, seem wholly undeserving of record, his own feelings prompt him to detail with unusual minuteness, even though he may be conscious all the while that he is entering upon details which his readers will scarcely take the trouble to follow.

Having thus rendered our quarters as snug as they were capable of being made, my friend and myself proceeded daily into the adjoining woods in search of game; and as the frost set in we found them amply stored, not only with hares and rabbits, but with woodcocks, snipes, and other birds of passage. We were not, however, so fortunate as to fall in with any of the wild boars which are said to frequent these thickets, though we devoted more than one morning to the search; but we managed to supply our own table, and the tables of several of our comrades, with a very agreeable addition to the lean beef which was issued out to us. Nor were other luxuries wanting. The peasantry, having recovered their confidence, returned in great numbers to their homes, and seldom failed to call at our mansion once or twice a-week with wine, fresh bread, cider, and bottled beer; by the help of which we continued to fare well as long as our fast-diminishing stock of money lasted. I say fast-diminishing stock of money, for as yet no addition had been made to that which each of us brought with him from England; and though the pay of the army was now six months in arrear, but faint hopes were entertained of any immediate donative.

It was not, however, among regimental and other inferior officers alone that this period of military inaction was esteemed and acted upon as one of enjoyment. Lord Wellington's fox-hounds were unkennelled; and he himself took the field regularly twice a-week, as if he had been a denizen of Leicestershire, or any other sporting county in England. I need not add that few packs in any county could be better attended. Not that the horses of all the huntsmen were of the best breed, or of the gayest appearance; but what was wanting in individual splendour, was made up by the number of Nimrods; nor would it be easy to discover a field more fruitful in laughable occurrences, which no man more heartily enjoyed than the gallant Marquess himself. When the hounds were out, he was no longer the Commander of the Forces, the General-in-Chief of three nations, and the representative of three sovereigns, but the gay merry country gentleman, who rode at everything, and laughed as loud when he fell himself as when he witnessed the fall of a brother sportsman.

Thus passed about twenty days, during the greater number of which the sky was clear and the air cold and bracing. Occasionally, indeed, we varied our sporting life by visits to St Jean de Luz, and other towns in the rear, and by seeking out old friends in other divisions of the army. Nor were we altogether without military occupation. Here and there a redoubt was thrown up for the purpose of rendering our position doubly secure; and the various brigades of each division relieved one another in taking the duty of the outposts. A trifling skirmish or two likewise tended to keep us alive; but these were followed by no movement of importance, nor were they very fatal either to the enemy or ourselves.

The position which Lord Wellington thus took up extended from the village of Bidart on the left to a place called Garret's House on the right. It embraced various other villages, such as that of Arcanques, Gauthory, &c. &c., between these points, and kept the extremities of the line at a distance of perhaps six or seven miles from each other. To a common observer it certainly had in it nothing imposing, or calculated to give the idea of great natural strength. On the left, in particular, our troops, when called into the field, occupied a level plain, wooded indeed, but very little broken; whilst at different points in the centre there were passes easy of approach, and far from defensible in any extraordinary degree. But its strength was well tried, as I shall take occasion shortly to relate; and the issue of the trial proved that no error had been committed in its selection.

Of the manner in which the right and centre columns were disposed I knew but little. The left column, consisting of the first and fifth divisions, of two or three brigades of Portuguese infantry, one brigade of light and one of heavy cavalry, was thus posted: The town of St Jean de Luz, in which Lord Wellington had fixed his quarters, was occupied by three or four battalions of Guards; its suburbs were given up to such corps of the German legion as were attached to the first division. In and about the town the light cavalry was likewise quartered; whilst the heavy was sent back to Handaye and the villages near it, on account of the facility of procuring forage which there existed. The Spaniards had again fallen back as far as Irun, and were not brought up during the remainder of the winter; but the Portuguese regiments were scattered, like ourselves, among a number of detached cottages near the road. In the village of Bidart was posted the fifth division, a battery or two of field-artillery, and the men and horses attached to them; and to it the duty of watching the enemy, and keeping possession of the ground on which the pickets stood, was committed. Thus, along the line of the highroad was housed a corps of about fifteen thousand infantry, twelve hundred cavalry, and a due proportion of artillery—all under the immediate command of Sir John Hope.